


sans peur et sans reproche

by reconditarmonia



Category: The Strange Case of Starship Iris (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Femslash February, Femslash February 2020, Loyalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22392679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/pseuds/reconditarmonia
Summary: Sana should have left her behind, but with Sana there was no use saying that.
Relationships: Arkady Patel/Sana Tripathi
Comments: 14
Kudos: 34
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	sans peur et sans reproche

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaggedwolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaggedwolf/gifts).



Arkady’s eyes opened onto clinical white light. So maybe this was it. The last thing she remembered was running blindly with Sana through the twisty little streets of the spaceport, the oldest part of the town on Kiesler, trying to lose the IGR agents while klaxons screamed in her ears. Not the three who’d flanked their client as he’d stepped out of the shadows in the warehouse; those ones were lying on the floor where Arkady had dropped them, one, two, three shots and one more for the client, and soon they’d be as cold as the concrete. She’d felt something rip through her lower back, and suddenly it had been a lot harder to run; the hot pain had come a few moments later, the spinning round and dropping to a knee to fire a couple of shots back, gritting her teeth and trying to drag herself up and onward, not knowing whether or not she’d hit them. Then Sana's half-lit face — no, no — _turning back_ and swimming in her vision, and then the ground rushing up to meet her.

It figured that her first big job with Tripathi would go this far south. She could only hope that Sana had gotten away; it didn’t really matter that you’d sooner die than betray your captain if she was strapped to the interrogation table next to yours, or dead somewhere. 

"You're awake," said Sana's voice next to her. Arkady struggled to sit up, but stopped at Sana's hand on her shoulder pressing her back down. Sana's face hovered into view over her, lined with worry, the light catching the strands of dark and gray hair that straggled out of her braid and surrounded her head like a corona. "Careful, Ishani, sweetheart, don't strain yourself." Her eyes flickered over to the side; there must be someone else there. In spite of herself, a little knot in Arkady's chest loosened.

The white light, it turned out, belonged to the town hospital. It wasn’t the first time Arkady had been shot on the job, but it was the first time she’d seen the inside of a real hospital for it. “Sana,” said Arkady, when the nurse had left “Rukhmani” alone to comfort her poor wife, an innocent bystander caught in crossfire — and how Arkady’s heart warmed at that, even as her gut wrenched with something that wasn't her wound — “this must be costing more than we made from the delivery. More than we would have made if they hadn't gotten the jump on me."

"Yeah," said Sana simply. 

Arkady couldn't dwell too long on the thought of Sana risking her livelihood, or worse, on a security officer who couldn't even vet their clients. "How long are we safe here?"

"The _Rumor_ 's off-planet. We'll get in touch with Tal when you can move."

"That's not — _Sana_. They have to know they shot someone who couldn't have made it back to the ship. They'll find us soon." Arkady's heart raced in her throat, and her face burned. Sana should have left her behind, but with Sana there was no use saying that.

"They won't track us here. I saw them go down.” Sana’s eyes grew sad, distant, hard. So — Arkady couldn’t run a background check that would make sure that the guy they were going to meet wasn’t a fascist, but she was still good at putting bullets in people and making sure they died. Someone with a family, or a cat, who went out to do their job and didn’t make it home. At least Sana was safe. “For all anyone knows, we were out walking in a bad neighborhood. I...I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, with the cover story. It was the first thing I could think of.”

Arkady reached for Sana’s hand and brought it to her lips, and Sana drew in a quiet breath. "Only the hottest young trophy wife for Captain Tripathi." Sana laughed, then, a good, loud sound.

Sana’s hands were chapped and warm, and Arkady knew how strong they were. It was late when the nurse finally managed to shoo her out, and when she came back the next day and in the couple of days after that, they were stained with grease from the mechanic work she was trading for a roof over her head while Arkady recovered. She’d stop by with snacks sometimes if she’d been shopping, tea or the spicy vegetable fritters popular on this part of Kiesler, but more often it would just be her, going over potential jobs with Arkady for when they got off-planet, arguing about bars, or trading increasingly absurd details about "Rukhmani" and "Ishani"'s history when anyone could hear them.

“You should have picked up knitting,” Arkady told her. “You’d have a whole sweater by now.”

Sana's mouth quirked. "Not exactly my kind of project."

Arkady didn’t have a great idea of how long that sort of thing took, anyway, and didn’t think Sana did either, but a few days unable to do anything felt like forever, even with a tablet she’d cracked to work while Sana was out. That was how she found out. It was the morning they were going to let her go, and she was about to tap away from the news story when she recognized a scrapyard sign in the photo, something she’d logged in her brain when she was running away from the warehouse without consciously thinking about it. The story said that the IGR was still investigating the deaths of several of its agents in the port district, trying to trace the origin of the bullets found embedded in the walls near the bodies.

Sana had said Arkady’s shots had hit them.

No — she hadn’t said that. She’d said she saw them go down, and it hadn't been a lie.

When they let Arkady out, she headed over to Sana's temporary bolt-hole in the back of the mechanic's shop, nodding along to the nurse's instructions for wound care without really hearing them. Sana was working out back, but she could wait, the guy said. Even from just a few days, Sana’s fingerprints were all over this place: her patterned scarf folded up at the top of the cot as a pillow, a small bar of that cheap soap she liked whose scent Arkady thought she could pinpoint anywhere, even if it was sold in a dozen systems. Sana could make anywhere a home.

Sana came over, wiping her hands dry on the same coveralls she'd worn for the job. "Arkady," she said, and grasped her by both shoulders, squeezed. The closest it was safe to come to a hug, probably. The noise of machinery was loud enough to prevent anyone else from hearing.

"Are you sure you want me to come with you?" Arkady asked her. And before Sana could say anything, "You had to kill someone because of me. More than one person. You could have left me behind." She wasn't under any illusions about Sana's hands being clean. Even if she hadn't been right there in the uprising with her, the things Sana did on Cresswin were public record. But that was what she had Arkady for now, or what she was supposed to have her for.

The steel in Sana's voice surprised her. "The _Rumor_ is my ship. My crew. I'm the one who gets to make the call about who's worth it." Sana looked away — Arkady couldn't remember a time when Sana hadn't been able to look her in the eye — and busied herself putting her few things in her pack. She took a deep breath, and let it out. "But — if you want to leave, I'm not going to stop you walking away. It's your choice."

"I don't want to," said Arkady, feeling like the answer was being torn from her throat.

Another slow exhale, as Sana looked back at her. "I'm glad." She reached under the mattress — Arkady could probably have figured that that was where Sana was keeping the stuff of hers that would have made the hospital wonder about their patient. Her belt, guns still in their holsters — easier to get off the whole belt in a hurry and shove it in a pack. Sana set it on Arkady’s waist, buckled it and pulled it snug, careful of Arkady’s wound. Her expression was focused and oddly solemn; her hands were slow and precise, and didn’t touch Arkady once. Maybe Arkady was imagining it, but she thought she could feel how warm they were; she was already missing the part where she and Sana were pretending to be a couple.

Sana stepped back to grab the rest of the stuff, after what felt longer than the few seconds it must have been. Knife — Arkady took it and put it in her boot, a comforting weight. And then a folded thing that Arkady realized was her vest. She'd figured that the hospital had cut it off her and thrown it away.

She took it from Sana and shook it out, then noticed that it had been transformed. Before, it had been functional enough, canvas, not as many pockets as Arkady would have liked but it would hold ammo, a thumb drive, a knife. Now, the bullet hole in the back was patched, but that was barely noticeable compared to the metal studs, row upon row laid out close together, dotting every part of it until it looked like —

“Armor,” said Sana. “Arkady — I don’t want you to die for me.”

Arkady swallowed. “Wow, captain, that’s pretty forward of you.” But she slid the vest over her shoulders, feeling the added weight settle onto her, and saw a little tension she hadn’t realized was there leave Sana's body. When Sana reached out to smooth it down, then stopped, hand hovering over Arkady's heart, she opened her arms to let her.

The dull light bouncing off of the hundreds of little pieces of metal shifted on Sana’s face as she adjusted the vest. She had to have spent every free minute on it since the nurses had first chased her out of the hospital, Arkady thought. “Hey,” Sana said, “you knew what you were getting into when you proposed to me.”

"That night on Coyolxauhqui 4," Arkady agreed, "on the bridge, with that music. You wouldn’t let me get down on one knee because I was wearing really snazzy pants." Sana's attention was focused on something else; she looked Arkady up and down, observing her handiwork, making Arkady uncomfortably aware of — she didn’t even know. Her own hands, her neck. “I don’t know if this’d stop a bullet,” Arkady said, because she felt like she had to. “Not from someone really committed, anyway.”

It wasn’t the point, and she and Sana both knew it. “I mean it, Kady. Protecting my crew is my job, too. I need you for more things than dying for me.”

Maybe that should have made things worse, the idea that she was more valuable to Sana as a killer. But until the day they lived in a world where no one had to do it, better for it to be her. “It’s...nice. Thanks.” She felt in the pockets — there was that mag she hadn’t had time to load, right where she’d left it. This was really hers.

Sana finished putting her things in her pack — everything but a small shopping bag that wouldn’t fit, and that Arkady realized had to contain whatever goddamn bedazzler Sana must have bought for this — this sentimental, wasteful project. Well, you knew what they said about Kiesler. “Besides,” Sana said, “the knight in shining armor thing looks good on you.” It felt like it should have been a joke or a line, an offhand comment that didn't say anything about why Sana had done this, but Sana was looking right at her, and Arkady felt, at the same time, more anchored on her feet than she could remember and suddenly weightless.

“Sir Arkady,” she said. “Yep. That’s me.” 


End file.
